Congratulations to Heather L. Bray on being selected as the 2013 Holocaust Remembrance Essay Award recipient, an annual international award for the best essay written by a law student on a topic relating to law and the Holocaust. Heather's essay, "Post-War Restitution Measures for Property Expropriation in Austria: An Extreme Injustice" was selected by the Award's Judging Panel composed of Professor Vivian Curran, School of Law, University of Pittsburgh; David Fraser, Professor of Law and Social Theory, School of Law, University of Nottingham; and Professor Ted DeCoste, Faculty of Law, University of Alberta Faculty of Law, to receive the 2013 Holocaust Remembrance Essay Award. Heather will receive the Award Parchment and the $500.00 CDN Prize.
Born and raised in Nelson, British Columbia, Heather Bray is currently a Research Fellow at the Max Planck Institute for Comparative Public Law and International Law in the Lex Mercatoria Publica Project directed by Dr. Stephan Schill. Her thesis focuses on the historical practice of private-public arbitrations that have taken place in institutionalized international claims commissions primarily between the nineteenth and twentieth centuries and specifically assessing their contribution to the modern practice of private-public arbitration.
Heather is also a S.J.D. candidate in the International Trade and Business Law Program at the University of Arizona, where she is examining the intersection between international human rights and international investment law in the law of State responsibility for injury to aliens. Formerly, she interned with Dr. Todd Weiler in the area of international investment law and commercial arbitration and worked for JURIS as a Legal Research Associate helping to develop an online arbitration database (Arbitrationlaw.com). Heather obtained an LL.M. in the Business Law and Taxation Program at Western University (2011) and received a LLB from the University of New Brunswick (2010).
She is a Barrister and Solicitor of the Law Society of Upper Canada and is currently Assistant Editor of the Journal of World Investment and Trade. Heather is the winner of the Fourth Annual ICSID Review-Foreign Investment Law Journal Student Writing Competition for her paper titled "ICSID and the Right to Water: An Ingredient in the Stone Soup". She has also published with the Hague Yearbook of International Law, the Journal of World Investment and Trade, the American University International Law Review, Transnational Dispute Management Journal, and JURIS.
"I am honoured to be the recipient of the 2013 Holocaust Remembrance Essay Award," Heather said. "This award is an important contribution to the living memory of the six million Jewish victims who perished in the Shoah. Examining the holocaust through a legal lens helps to strengthen our role as legal professionals, tackle contemporary ethical issues through a historical perspective, and ensure the protection of human dignity and the preservation of the rule of law."
For more than ten years - and in recent years, through the kind generosity of one of its alumni, Mr. Henry Wolfond of Toronto - the University of Alberta Faculty of Law has been honoured to support the Holocaust Remembrance Essay Award, the mission of which is to keep alive the memory of the Holocaust in the legal academy. The Award grew out of the conference "The Holocaust: Art / Politics / Law" which was held at this Faculty in fall 1997. Professor Ted DeCoste, who along with Professor Bernie Schwartz (Faculty of Education, Alberta), organized the Conference, notes that "the Award is the only one of its kind in the English-speaking legal academic world."
To read Heather Bray's winning essay click here.
For more information about the Holocaust Remembrance Essay Award, please visit: http://www.law.ualberta.ca/currentstudents/financialinformation/holocaust.php